Lu Shaye, a well known wolf warrior in China’s diplomatic corps, has been appointed China’s special representative for European affairs — in effect, ambassador to the EU. Lu, formerly China’s ambassador to France, got a lot of people annoyed when, speaking of Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics in April 2023, he announced that they were not real countries: “Even these former Soviet countries don’t have an effective status under international law because there is no international agreement under international law to concretise their status as sovereign countries.”
Lu’s remarks were not simply impolitic. They betrayed an ignorance of international law. There is no international law doctrine that says an international agreement is necessary in order for a political entity to be recognized as a sovereign country. In fact, the Montevideo Convention, which is considered to be declaratory of international law on this question, specifically provides in Article 3 that “[t]he political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states.” It does not even bother saying that no international agreement is required, probably because it seemed too obvious to be worth mentioning. I would love for someone to ask Lu which international agreement was needed to concretize China’s status as a sovereign country.
The application to Taiwan is, of course, obvious. Many people think that to the extent other countries don’t have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it’s not a real state. Whether you take a practical, realistic perspective or a formal legal perspective, it just ain’t so. From a practical perspective, Taiwan is of course a sovereign state. Its government doesn’t take orders from any higher authority. And from a formal legal perspective, it is, too, because international law doctrine tells you to take a practical, realistic perspective. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention — which again is considered declaratory of existing international law, and thus worth citing even with respect to countries that are not signatories — states, “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c ) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”
These are all questions about facts on the ground. That’s why Lu’s remarks were so dumb. The PRC Foreign Ministry tried to walk back his comments, but although he has kept a low profile for the past several months (hence my use of the word “return” in the title of this post), there is no sign his career ever suffered for his having made them.